The story of living in spite of melanoma, CLND (X 2!), metastasis, vaccines, anti-PD-1, lung removal, and stereotactic radiation. (With a little adenocarcinoma ex-goblet cell carcinoid thrown in!!!) The story of life with family and friends. {Posts under ~ Sew Chaotically, Travel Chaotically, and Chaotic Cookery also housed within! A girl's gotta have fun!}

About Me

Who am I? That is a question the rest of you could probably answer better than I. I am a wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, pediatric nurse practitioner, cook, teacher, gardener, lover of words and music, occasional seamstress, and homemaker. I do have a couple of talents of questionable merit: I can create a decent meal in less than 30 minutes. I can feed and/or soothe almost any baby. And I can remember practically any song I've ever heard. For the rest, I'd rather those who know me decide.

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Childhood experiences and PCBs relative to melanoma

This is a little weird and there is much to be considered when looking at an epidemiological study....was it strictly the point in question (here elevated PCBs), or the genetic make-up of the population, or something else they all happened to eat, drink, participate in, be exposed to????? - that makes the outcome what it is???? Nevertheless, this study caught B's eye because he knows that my grandparents and several aunts/uncles lived in this area while I was a child and young adult. As such, I spent a fair amount of time visiting Anniston, Munford, Talledega, and Jacksonville, Alabama from early childhood until my granny passed in 1992. I was born in 1964...so not sure what all this means or if it played any role in my condition. For the record, no one else in my extended family who lived in that area, nor any of my siblings have melanoma, though my grandfather died of what was said to be "leukemia" though some of the information that has been passed on doesn't really line up with that, sounding more like lymphoma instead, but I was too young to understand much at the time and by the time I had a medical education there was really no way to extract more information. However, an aunt in the area has dealt with non-Hodgkin lymphoma for about as long as I have been dealing with melanoma. So...here you go:

Serum polychlorinated biphenyls
(PCBs) have previously been associated with longer leukocyte telomere
length (LTL) in most, but not all, of the few previous studies. PCBs
were produced in Anniston, Alabama from 1929 to 1971 and participants
of the Anniston Community Health Survey (ACHS) were highly exposed.

We evaluated serum levels of 35 PCBs
and relative telomere length in 559 ACHS participants.Relative LTL was measured in DNA
extracted from blood clots. We assessed PCBs individually, grouped by
chlorination, and summed PCBs. We used linear regression to assess
the association between each PCB metric while adjusting for pertinent
covariates. Serum PCBs were associated with
longer LTL among white participants and the oldest age group of black
participants. Among white participants, compared with those in the
first quartile of sum PCBs those in the third quartile of sum PCBs
had 8.09% longer relative LTL and those in the fourth had 7.58%
longer relative LTL. Among African American participants, serum PCBs
were associated with longer relative LTL among those over age 64
only. Tests for interaction were not statistically significant. We observed a non-linear positive
association between serum PCBs and LTL among white participants.
Serum PCBs were associated with longer LTL in the oldest age group of
African Americans. This association may provide insight into the
cancers previously associated with exposure to PCBs, melanoma and
non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which have been associated with long LTL in
previous studies.

So...if this is true, and the correlation is direct...there seems to be another need for limiting exposure to PCBs (not that we didn't already know that for numerous other reasons)! For what it's worth. - c